New Delhi — The Union government has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Delhi High Court's order that allowed Vedanta Ltd and Ravva Oil (Singapore) Pvt Ltd to enforce foreign arbitration awards arising from the Ravva oil field dispute, involving claims of $99 million, Mint reported on Sunday.

Source: Mint

According to the Supreme Court's list of cases, the Centre's plea will be heard on Monday by a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Manmohan. Mint said its queries to Vedanta and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas remained unanswered at the time of publication.

$99 millionForeign arbitral awards at stake
1994Year the Ravva production sharing contract was signed
1 July 2026Delhi High Court order now under challenge

On July 1, 2026, Justice Jasmeet Singh of the Delhi High Court allowed the enforcement petition filed by the companies under Sections 47 and 49 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, dismissed the Centre's objections and directed that the bank guarantees furnished by the companies be released within eight weeks, Bar and Bench and The Hindu BusinessLine reported.

Source: Bar and Bench

The dispute dates back to 1994, when the government signed a production sharing contract (PSC) with a consortium including ONGC, Videocon Petroleum, Ravva Oil and Cairn Energy to develop the Ravva field in the Krishna-Godavari basin; Cairn's interest later passed to Cairn India, which merged with Vedanta. At the heart of the fight is the 'ONGC Carry' issue — how payments made by the companies towards ONGC's historical costs should be counted while calculating each side's share of oil revenue.

The PSC sent disputes to arbitration in Kuala Lumpur under UNCITRAL rules. A tribunal's partial award of October 2004 decided two of six issues for the companies and four for the government, leaving the ONGC Carry quantification open. In July 2014 the government issued a show-cause notice demanding $64 million from Vedanta and $35 million from Ravva Oil; the tribunal's final award followed on October 26, 2016, and Malaysia's Federal Court upheld the awards in February 2019.

Rejecting the Centre's objections, the Delhi High Court held that an enforcement court cannot reopen the merits of a dispute or reconsider a tribunal's findings merely because the government disagrees with them, and noted that the substantial objections had already been decided by the Supreme Court in its 2020 judgment in Union of India v. Vedanta Ltd. What happens next will be decided at Monday's hearing. In a separate fight, Vedanta is also challenging the Centre's decision not to extend its CB-OS/2 offshore block contract in Gujarat's Cambay basin; the Delhi High Court reserved judgment in that case on October 1, 2026.